TEPCO shareholders’ meeting marked by calls to break away from nuclear power

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) came under bitter criticism over its corporate management and handling of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant at a general shareholders meeting in Tokyo on June 27, the utility’s second since the outbreak of the crisis.

At 10 a.m., 3,112 shareholders filed into Yoyogi National Gymnasium in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward for the meeting — highlighting the high interest in a horde of issues including huge compensation payments over the nuclear disaster triggered by the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami. The shareholders’ meeting kicked off in a highly tumultuous atmosphere, with civic groups and ordinary citizens also gathering outside the venue, calling for a nuclear-free energy policy.

Individual shareholders and other interested parties started turning up shortly after 8 a.m., about two hours before the start of the meeting. Among them was a 45-year-old company employee from Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward, who held a fan reading “No nuclear power.”

TOMIOKA, Japan — Vines creep across Tomioka’s empty streets, its prim gardens overgrown with waist-high weeds and meadow flowers. Dead cows rot where they were left to starve in their pens. Chicken coops writhe with maggots, a sickening stench hanging in the air.

This once-thriving community of 16,000 people now has a population of one.

In this nuclear no-man’s land poisoned by radiation from a disaster-battered power plant, rice farmer Naoto Matsumura refuses to leave despite government orders. He says he has thought about the possibility of getting cancer but prefers to stay – with a skinny dog named Aki his constant companion.

Seismologists Warn Japan Against Nuclear Restart

– Common Dreams staff

Despite widespread public opposition to a restart of nuclear reactors across the country, Japan recently approved the restart of two reactors at the Oi nuclear plant which could go back online as early as July 1st. Today, however, two prominent Japanese seismologists, have argued that that plant reactors sit far more precariously than their operator, Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), has claimed in order to rush their restart, that officials are moving too fast and that grave dangers still exist.

A mother and her child join a protest against the Japanese government’s decision to restart two nuclear reactors, in front of the Japanese embassy in Bangkok June 15, 2012. (Reuters/Sukree Sukplang)

Oi nuclear power plant reactor to be reactivated July 1

TOKYO (Kyodo) — One of the two reactors slated to be fired up again at Kansai Electric Power Co.’s Oi nuclear power station is expected to be restarted on July 1, utility officials said Monday.

Work to restart the No. 3 reactor at the Oi plant in Fukui Prefecture has been largely progressing well, said officials, noting rods used to control nuclear fission reactions will be pulled from the reactor core sometime during the evening to late night on July 1.

The operator suggested earlier it would reactivate the No. 3 unit between July 1 and 3.

In a related development, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency suggested it will not immediately disclose incidents involving some alarm activations at the seaside power plant, following several recent incidents when alarms sounded, indicating abnormalities with equipment used to monitor power transmission lines.

Internal vs. External Radiation Exposure Explained (Arnie Gundersen)

KANAZAWA — One hundred and twenty local residents filed a lawsuit with the Kanazawa District Court against Hokuriku Electric Power Co. on June 26, demanding the utility stop operating the Shika Nuclear Power Plant, which they say is not fully resistant to major earthquakes.

In the suit, the local residents from Ishikawa and Toyama prefectures said, “The present quake-resistance guidelines for the nuclear power plant have serious flaws.” They argued that the nuclear power station was not built on the assumption that multiple active faults near the nuclear plant could work together and the utility does not take into account an assessment made by experts that the “Togikawa-nangan fault” immediately next to the nuclear plant is an active fault.

Incalculable loss: Mikio Watanabe holds a photograph of his wife, Hamako, on Monday. He blames Tokyo Electric Power Co. for her suicide and is seeking compensation from the utility. THE WASHINGTON POST

Nuclear redress will never approximate losses

By CHICO HARLAN

The Washington Post

It was 15 months ago that the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant suffered three meltdowns and contaminated a broad circle of countryside and left hundreds of thousands of people without homes, jobs or both.

But for all the damage and despair it wrought, the disaster so far has unfolded without one conventional element: a widespread and contentious legal fight by those who say they should be compensated for their losses.

Victims of the worst nuclear crisis in a quarter-century have filed roughly 20 lawsuits against Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to the utility. That compares with the several hundred suits filed against BP within weeks of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, including the near-finalized settlement of a class-action suit that will pay 120,000 plaintiffs upward of $7.8 billion. BP also paid out some $6.2 billion to victims via a neutral claims settlement process, administered by a lawyer appointed by the Obama administration.

Japan Bird Assoc.: It reminded me of ‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson; Forest of no chirp — We found only a few swallows in Fukushima town, other summer birds missing as well

Visited Iidatemura Fukushima to research how radiation affect swallows. Atmospheric dose was 4~5μSv/h at average, the highest reading was 8μSv/h on the ground. Rice fields were abandoned, all the villagers evacuated, we found only a few swallows.

It is not only swallow, we couldn’t find other summer birds such as Narcissus Flycatcher or blue-and-white flycatcher either. It reminded me of “Silent Spring” by Rachel Louise Carson. Forest of no chirp.

Japan Wind Map

Very interesting, I love Japan but I question the way their media covered the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima meltdown. From what I saw there, I don’t think I’d eat the food coming from there. I wrote an article while I was there last summer about what was going on around me.